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There’s a theory that contends the US Federal Reserve, aka the Fed, is an institution that acts independent of the US Congress, has zero transparency or accountability, and even determines its own monetary policy. If one day proven to be correct, the alternative theory surrounding the Federal Reserve is one that may explain a variety of unusual occurrences in financial markets over the years.

We investigate the Fed, in general, and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, in some detail, in our book INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$: The Global Banking Elite Exposed and the Case for Restructuring Capitalism. An excerpt from the book follows…

In 1913, the banksters finally succeeded in creating a US central bank with the passing of the Federal Reserve Act. This bill, which had already been soundly defeated several times, appears to have come to fruition only because of well-orchestrated timing: the Federal Reserve Act was slipped through a skeleton Congress on December 23, 1913 when most of the bill’s opponents had already left Congress for the holidays.

The Federal Reserve System, which was first devised in that secret meeting on Jekyll Island, was now codified by Congress and remains in effect to this day.

Fact: The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States even though it’s not a part of the US Government.

Say what?

It’s not a part of the government. Not even remotely.

But it says Federal! Surely it cannot be a privately owned organization?

The Fed is not a part of the government, at all.

Critics of the Federal Reserve say its sole purpose is to strip wealth from honest, hardworking American citizens and make the world’s leading banking clans even richer.

John Hylan, Mayor of New York City from 1917 until 1925, made some extraordinary statements in a speech he delivered in 1922. What Mayor Hylan said seems to confirm a grand conspiracy was indeed devised for the American banking system by the global elite.

“The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation,” said Mayor Hyland. “To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business.”

Only nine years after the Federal Reserve System was created, Mayor Hylan already seemed to be aware that this “invisible government” of “powerful international bankers” was controlling the US Government.

Cast your eye over these other quotes about the Fed and make up your own mind…

“Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States.”–Senator Barry Goldwater

“The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people’s money.”–Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1923

In a book on “international banksters,” in a section on “financial overlords,” we’d be remiss not to at least mention in passing the elite families who have been juggernauts in the history of global banking. We address this in our book INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$: The Global Banking Elite Exposed and the Case for Restructuring Capitalism.

The Oppenheim Family…Photo taken in pre-war Germany.

In the following excerpt from INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$ the impact elite banking families have had on the so-called free market is examined:

Families such as German financial dynasty the Oppenheim family who began to dominate the finance and banking sectors in Europe from the 18th Century onwards. One of the Oppenheim family’s key assets for centuries, Sal. Oppenheim, was the highest valued privately owned investment bank in Europe until the family sold it in 2009.

An even more powerful banking clan is the almost infinitely-wealthy Rothschild family who also entered the banking industry in 18th Century Europe and used to own mining giant Rio Tinto.

Some say the Rothschilds have incalculable wealth and that even the price of gold is determined by them.

In the United States, the Rockefellers are essentially the equivalent of the Rothschilds, or almost. Besides their extensive background in the oil business, the Rockefellers have long been an elite banking family with key investments like Chase Manhattan Bank and JP Morgan Chase.

Although it’s not commonly reported or even investigated by mainstream media, it seems logical that these elite banking families would manipulate financial markets in their favor. Especially given they have dominated banking for centuries and have the process down to a fine art.

Another important point is these families made much of their fortunes through either criminal or highly immoral enterprises – perhaps deserving their “bankster” titles bestowed upon them by certain independent researchers.

For example, a June 26, 2009 article in the UK’s Financial Times mentions the Rothschilds’ and other elite banking families’ historical links to slavery.

“Two of the biggest names in the City of London,” the article states, “had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.

“Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery”.

The Rockefeller-associated asset, JP Morgan, is also listed in the Financial Times article as having ties to the slave trade.

“JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the company’s historic links to slavery.

“In the case of Mr Rothschild, the documents reveal for the first time that he made personal gains by using slaves as collateral in banking dealings with a slave owner”.

The article also names Lehman Brothers and the Bank of America as among other major financial institutions that profited off slavery.

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“For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” –David Rockefeller from his 2002 autobiography Memoirs.

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Could it be that some, or even many, of the world’s recent financial problems – including meltdowns and crashes – are partly due to market manipulation these elite banksters (partially listed in this chapter) are doing in secret?

If the answer to that question is yes, then it is highly likely much of this subtle, semi-hidden manipulation of the “free market” is done via the much denigrated central banks.

Beyond the official summaries of the world’s wealth, and how few control it, there is in our opinion a hidden system of finance, which, if one day proven, will show there is an even greater gap between the global elite and the rest.

We expand on this in our book INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$: The Global Banking Elite Exposed and the Case for Restructuring Capitalism.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

It’s generally accepted the world’s so-called ‘Rich Lists,’ from Forbes and the like, are not accurate in that their estimates of the Rich Listers’ wealth are just that – estimates. However, according to our research, the world’s wealthiest individuals don’t necessarily even make the lists.

It has been purported by financial researchers and others in the know that there are individuals whose net worth would dwarf whoever tops the Forbes Rich List at any given time – net worth the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or Carlos Slim Helu could only dream about.

This may be hard to fathom, but it’s important to consider two points when analyzing the finances of the global elite.

Firstly, without being able to inspect the bank accounts of billionaires, Forbes and similar Rich List publishers can only make crude guesstimates of individuals’ true worth. As a result, their lists are anything but official and their accuracy is questionable – something the billionaire community is quick to point out.

Secondly, beyond those individuals and sums mentioned on the Rich Lists, there exists what is often referred to as invisible or hidden wealth. This involves non-disclosed fortunes that are virtually impossible to detect. The planet’s invisible wealth is comprised of undeclared income stashed away in offshore tax havens and Swiss bank accounts, secret Old World money and black market economies in which criminal enterprises conduct their business.

The criminal enterprises referred to include illegal drugs and arms dealing. One such arms dealer is Saudi Arabian Adnan Khashoggi who some banking and financial commentators estimate had a massive personal fortune of between US$2 trillion and US$7 trillion in the 1980’s.

However, the world is still waiting for its first official trillionaire, and Khashoggi’s fortune was only ever estimated by Forbes and the likes to be worth between $400 million and several billion. If the rumors of Khashoggi’s multi-trillion dollar personal fortune were true then there’s an extremely wide gulf separating unofficial and official estimates of his wealth.

The 2005 feature film Lord of War, directed by Andrew Niccol and starring Nicolas Cage and Ethan Hawke, is said to have been inspired by Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Like Khashoggi, Bout is rumored to have amassed a huge personal fortune impossible to estimate. Cage’s character, a Ukranian-American arms dealer, is shown in the movie to be above the law with apparently unlimited money and resources.

The now deceased former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos is another individual strongly rumored to have profited from the black market. Many who investigated Marcos, including politicians in the current Philippine government, say much of his wealth was secured from discoveries of the WW2 Japanese treasure hoard known as Yamashita’s Gold. As the existence of those treasures was never acknowledged by any government, it’s conceivable President Marcos could have amassed a large fortune impossible to trace or estimate. Some investigators say his secret bank accounts amounted to trillions of dollars.

If this sounds totally unbelievable, consider the television interview his widowed wife Imelda Marcos gave in 2009 for the BBC TV travel series Explore. While being filmed inside her lavish home in the Philippines, Imelda told BBC presenter Simon Reeve that her late husband was heavily associated with gold mining companies and also traded in gold.

The former First Lady then presented Reeve with an official document. Although she would not allow the document itself to be filmed, Reeve confirmed it was a Certificate of Deposit made by Ferdinand E. Marcos in a bank in Brussels, Belgium, for the amount of Nine Hundred and Eighty Seven Billion United States Dollars. For those who don’t have a good math brain, that’s only 13 billion short of a trillion bucks.

If true, this sum in Marcos’ Belgium bank account alone would be almost 13 times more than Bill Gates’ total current fortune. The legacy of the former president becomes even more staggering when considering that this was just one of his bank accounts; the Philippine government has confirmed through investigations of its own that Marcos had many such secret accounts in banks all over the world.

There’s nothing new about the morality of banks and bankers coming into question, but it’s not every day the banking sector attracts criticism from a former Archbishop of Canterbury. In our book INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$: The Global Banking Elite Exposed and the Case for Restructuring Capitalism, we draw attention to what former Archbishop George Carey has to say about this highly lucrative sector.

The relevant excerpt from INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$ follows:

In a Daily Mail article dated June 29, 2012, one George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, delivered a damning critique of the banking sector – a sector he describes as “an important part of the network of institutions which build a civil society”.

Former Archbishop Carey writes, “Thus evidence of corruption in our banks, and the resulting collapse of public trust in them, affects our very democracy.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that the sort of widespread alienation we are now witnessing among the public towards these multi-billion-pound behemoths can lead to civil unrest.

“Why? Because in more and more cases, naked greed seems to have been the driving force for many self-serving individuals in these institutions.

“That said, the real crisis we are facing is not a financial but a moral one. And it is a direct result of the something-for-nothing culture which is poisoning our society”.

Carey continues, “It seems utterly wrong that, at a time when banks have been rescued by the public purse to the tune of billions of pounds, they continue to dole out huge bonuses to their executives.

“To add insult to injury, they stand accused of refusing to lend to home-buyers and small businesses, thus causing even greater frustration and hardship for the hard-pressed man and woman in the street.

“Are they contrite? Hardly. All we see are greedy traders at Barclays systematically rigging interest rates to make their fortunes. And this comes just days after computer glitches at Nat West which left thousands of customers in uncertainty and financial trouble.

“It is hard not to conclude that institutionalised corruption is rife throughout today’s banking industry…What is needed now is a determination to open up the banking industry to a proper public inquiry”.

Archbishop Carey concludes, “Criminal charges must be brought where there is serious malpractice and corruption. This would only be a start, but at least it would begin to restore the public’s faith in institutions which seem far more interested in profits than morals”.

Like this:

Banks, or their reputation at least, didn’t fare too well in the corruption scandal surrounding FIFA (the Fédération Internationale de Football Association) — as we discovered when researching our new release book INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$: The Global Banking Elite Exposed and the Case for Restructuring Capitalism.

Sepp Blatter…former FIFA godfather.

A relevant excerpt from INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$ follows:

A Reuters report in the June 22, 2015 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald leaves no doubt the banks could have done more to prevent the corruption.

The report states, “A global group of government anti-money laundering agencies said that financial institutions have not done enough to police suspicious financial activity by officials at soccer’s global governing body FIFA, and cautioned banks to step up scrutiny.

“The warning from the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) came in the wake of last month’s indictment by the US of nine current and former FIFA officials and five business executives on a series of corruption charges, including bribery, money laundering and wire fraud”.

The Reuters report continues, “With the US investigation continuing to widen, and a separate Swiss probe…the warning will add to banks’ concern about handling certain soccer accounts for organizations and individuals…

“One question being asked in US banking circles is whether banks are acting quickly enough to flag activity once they have had subpoenas for information about an account from the authorities, said one source close to the industry…

“The acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Kelly T. Currie, told a news conference when the indictments were announced on May 27 that bank actions would be reviewed to see if they knowingly facilitated bribes. The banks concerned have not been accused of wrongdoing”.

While the banks may not have been accused of wrongdoing, that’s not to say they’ve done no wrong in the FIFA debacle.

The above Reuters report concludes, “The involvement of anti-money laundering monitors in current investigations of FIFA corruption was highlighted last week by Michael Lauber, attorney general of Switzerland.

“Lauber, who announced his FIFA investigation on the same day that US authorities revealed the indictments, told a news conference in Berne last week that his investigators were examining sets of suspicious transactions related to FIFA.

“He said that these transactions included 104 banking relationships, some of which involved multiple accounts, as well as 53 suspicious transactions which had been flagged by Swiss financial institutions to Switzerland’s anti-money laundering agency”.

When researching INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$: The Global Banking Elite Exposed and the Case for Restructuring Capitalism – Book #5 in our Underground Knowledge Series – the following comment by American business magnate Warren Buffet got us thinking: “If a graduating MBA student were to ask me, ‘How do I get rich in a hurry?’ I would not respond with quotations from Ben Franklin or Horatio Alger, but would instead hold my nose with one hand and point with the other toward Wall Street.”

Now when the man recognized as the world’s most successful investor speaks, you gotta take note, right? So we did, and we included our own critique of Wall Street bankers in INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$, in a chapter somewhat appropriately titled ‘Banksters on the rampage.’

An excerpt from the chapter follows:

In an article dated November 23, 2014 in USA Today, columnist John Maxfield predicts “There will come a time in the not-too-distant future when Wall Street banks won’t be regularly chastised for ripping off customers, defrauding the federal and state governments, facilitating tax evasion, laundering money for sworn enemies of the United States, and manipulating bond, interest rate, foreign-exchange, and energy markets. When this time comes, however, it shouldn’t be interpreted as a sign that things have changed”.

Maxfield says, “Between 2012 and 2013, eight banks – UBS, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Rabobank, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup – paid $6 billion to settle allegations that they manipulated the London interbank offered rate benchmark, one of the most widely tracked interest rate indexes in the world”.

Among the examples he lists, from 2013, is a combined US$9.3 billion payment from “more than a dozen banks… to make amends for systematically submitting fraudulent documents to courts in foreclosure proceedings”.

Maxfield says, “Thus, the question is whether these practices are indeed isolated incidences of employee misconduct, as the banks would like us to believe, or instead whether they’re indicative of a pattern of behavior that’s endemic on Wall Street. I suspect it’s the latter”.

He concludes, “Of course, it’s impossible to forensically prove that corruption is woven into the fabric of Wall Street banks – and, specifically, at companies with significant trading operations where the temptation to skirt the rules seems to be greatest. That’s certainly what history suggests. And it’s also what the ongoing regulatory assault on the industry implies. But, again, there is no way to quantitatively demonstrate this.

“But what we can say is that there is a noxious air of impropriety that has enveloped these operations. And, rightly or wrongly, this reputational baggage subjects shareholders of these banks to more risk than, at least in my opinion, is warranted by any reasonable estimate of future returns”.

As Maxfield implies, the major Wall Street banks seem to have fraudulent activities down to a science and it’s often virtually impossible to detect the sleight of hand in their activities.

Many veterans of the banking and financial sectors have either stated or heavily implied that the world’s money supply is essentially being created out of thin air and has no real value. Those who subscribe to this school of thought say the shaky foundations of financial systems in the 21st Century is mainly down to the fact that all countries use Fiat Money, or inconvertible paper money made legal tender by government decree.

We examine the phenomenon that is Fiat Money in INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$: The Global Banking Elite Exposed and the Case for Restructuring Capitalism – Book #5 in our Underground Knowledge Series.

An excerpt from INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$ follows:

Throughout history, at various times and as recently as only several decades ago, other monetary systems were traditionally used such as Commodity Money or Representative Money. This meant the value of the money was either in the currency itself (e.g. real gold and real silver coins) or else the currency was a direct representative of a real commodity in physical storage (e.g. gold and silver certificates).

However, other financial whistleblowers argue the monetary and inflationary problems undermining the world at present have more to do with the fraudulent activities within elite banking circles than they do with the Fiat Money system.

This headline in The Washington Post edition of May 20, 2015, caught our eye: “Five big banks agree to pay more than $5 billion to settle regulatory charges.” That sounded like a reasonably large fine to us…until one critic described it as “a slap on the wrist”. When you consider the monies involved, that critic is probably right.

Excerpts from The Washington Post article follow:

“Five of the world’s largest banks have agreed to pay more than $5 billion in fines to settle charges made by regulatory agencies and the Justice Department that the banks had acted in concert to manipulate international interest and foreign currency exchange rates.

“Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said the banks had engaged in ‘brazenly illegal behavior . . . on a near-daily basis.’ She added that the deal showed that the government ‘intends to vigorously prosecute all those who tilt the economic system in their favor (and) who subvert our marketplaces’.”

The article continues, “The scale of the price-fixing scandal is hard to grasp, yet it touched, imperceptibly, almost every company and individual in the financial markets. By tweaking global benchmarks used to set foreign exchange and interest rates for a staggering number of transactions a day, the banks — over several years — bilked billions of dollars of extra profits by altering rates in their favor.

“Critics complained that the Justice Department had failed to prosecute any additional individuals… The fines, however, are among the largest ever. Barclays will pay $2.4 billion and fire eight employees who violated New York banking law for attempting to manipulate spot foreign exchange markets, in which $500 billion worth of dollars and euros are traded every day — five times as much as on all U.S. stock markets combined…

“Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, a non-profit group, said that the Justice Department had not done enough, saying ‘it talks tough, but winks at Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail banks’ criminal conduct, structuring sweetheart deals to minimize the impact on the criminals.’ Kelleher said the fines alone wouldn’t deter future criminal acts and that the Justice Department should punish bank executives and their supervisors for bad behavior. ‘Banks don’t commit crimes, bankers do,’ he said”.

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“We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt

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“Banking is changing, slowly, but its culture is still corrupt.” That’s according to a headline in The Guardian newspaper’s edition of November 16, 2014.

In the article beneath that revealing headline, Guardian columnist Will Hutton says, “Another week, another financial scandal. Six global banks, including RBS and HSBC, were fined £2.6bn last week for rigging the foreign exchange markets. Since 2008, total fines levied in Europe and the US for banking crimes and misdemeanours now top £100bn, with banks making provision for a further £60bn. British banks alone have set aside an estimated £30bn for fines, provisions and litigation costs.”

Hutton asks, “What has gone wrong with Western finance?”

We are asking the same question.

Hutton continues, “The systemic ripping off of customers continued after the financial crisis to constitute what is now the biggest-ever global corporate scandal. Banks worldwide duped clients into buying products that were either not needed or provided no purpose. Worse, they organised financial markets whose purpose was to serve their own interests rather than those they purported to serve. It has proved a hard habit to break.

“British banks selling payment protection insurance (PPI) products on an industrial scale were doing what a street vendor in a bazaar might try. It shouldn’t have happened but it’s a perennial temptation. Finance is more exposed to this sort of risk, because customers are more credulous about financial products; and also because regulators have allowed banks to book the profits from products they sell on the moment of sale rather than over their life”.

Hutton concludes, “And yet reading the chatroom banter, with its echoes of the banter over mis-selling PPI, rigging interest rates or derivatives, offers a window into a very degraded culture. Making money from money, with the clients’ interest last, is too dominant an element in the culture of investment bankers. Companies are seen by too many people, notably shareholders, as just instruments for self-enrichment”.

But honestly, what can we expect from banksters when all they usually receive is a “slap on the wrist” from lawmakers whenever they get caught doing wrong?